February 25, 2010

Apartheid Week

February 22, 2010

Col. Kemp: Media Exploited by 'Dark Forces'

A former senior British army officer has said international media including the BBC are being exploited by "dark forces" who want to harm Israel.

Col Richard Kemp, who was a commander in Afghanistan, said some international criticism of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was motivated by anti-Semitism. . . .

But he added that despite similarities between the IDF and British forces, UK soldiers did not have to deal with the same amount of criticism from the international community.

"When we go into battle we do not get the same knee-jerk, almost Pavlovian response from many, many elements of the international media and international groups, humanitarian groups and other international groups such as the United Nations which should know better... of utter automatic condemnation. We don't have to put up with that."

To see Col. Kemp's testimony before the Goldstone commission, click here.

AJC Blasts BBC For Mossad Statement

The New York-based American Jewish Committee blasted the BBC on Sunday for airing an accusation that Jews around the world assist in supposed Mossad assassinations.

The AJC said in a statement that it was “dismayed that a guest on BBC Radio 4 was allowed to state unchallenged” that the Mossad relies on Jews for assassination plots.

“This baseless accusation crosses every red line between legitimate public discussion and bigoted fear-mongering,” said AJC executive director David Harris. “In less than a minute, the BBC has cast a shadow on the lives of Jews worldwide.”

BBC Radio 4’s PM program interviewed Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon’s Spies, a book about the Mossad, about the January 20 assassination of Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

Ha'aretz's J Street Promotions, Con't

You got to give them points for consistency. Ha'aretz has systematically ignored substantive criticism of J Street's policies, methods and funding, and so it comes as no surprise that the paper ignores the latest development in the reported snub of a J Street delegation by deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon.

It's not that the paper has ignored the controversy. To the contrary. Coverage includes two news articles (see here and here) and at least one Op-Ed condemning the alleged snub, which appeared today.

While the paper which has paid the matter substantial coverage until now, it nevertheless ignores the fact, that as reported in the Jerusalem Post today, the Foreign Ministry claims that J Street has lied about the whole affair. The Post reports:

The American “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby group J Street made “untrue assertions” about an alleged boycott of the congressional delegation it recently brought to Israel, and about Israel allegedly apologizing to the group for the slight, a senior Foreign Ministry official told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“[Deputy Foreign Minister Danny] Ayalon did not prevent the delegation from meeting with senior Israeli officials,” as claimed by J Street last week, said Barukh Binah, Foreign Ministry deputy director-general and head of its North America Division.

“Ayalon was never part of the delegation’s schedule and talk of boycotting meetings with congressman has no basis in fact. On the contrary, the deputy foreign minister is always willing to meet with elected officials from any friendly country, especially the United States of America, and [with] Jewish organizations which represent a range of diverse views from across the political spectrum.”

Binah also rejected the “subsequent assertion that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs apologized in hastily arranged meetings,” which he said was simply not true.

A senior Foreign Ministry official who asked to remain anonymous blasted the group for “coming to the region with the intention of creating headlines, perhaps for fund-raising purposes. The media and the congressmen became unwilling participants in a premeditated public relations circus. It is extremely disappointing that a so-called pro-Israel organization would put self-aggrandizement ahead of the interests of the State of Israel.”

While J Street chairman Jeremy Ben-Ami asserted that the delegation members were “key friends of Israel in Congress,” a recent vote on House Resolution 867, which slammed the Goldstone Report and reaffirmed Israel’s right to self-defense, saw only one of the five voting in Israel’s favor.

February 21, 2010

Buried Facts Around Cemetery Controversy

Saree Makdisi, a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed page who calls for the dissolution of the Jewish state of Israel, argued Feb. 12 against the Simon Weisenthal's planned Museum of Tolerance, slated to be built over a parking lot which was formerly a Muslim cemetery. His impassioned plea to prevent the alleged desecration of Muslim graves took a huge hit last week with the revelation of a 1945 Palestine Post article about Muslim plans to build over the very same site. The Jerusalem Postreports:

However, a November 22, 1945 article from The Palestine Post (the pre-state name of The Jerusalem Post), which was forwarded to the Wiesenthal Center on Monday after being posted on a blog, reports Muslim plans to build directly over the cemetery.

The report states, “An area of over 450 dunams in the heart of Jerusalem, now forming the Mamilla Cemetery, is to be converted into a business centre.

“The town-plan is being completed under the supervision of the Supreme Moslem Council in conjunction with the Government Town Planning Adviser,” the article continues.

“A six-storeyed building to house the Supreme Moslem Council and other offices, a four-storeyed hotel, a bank and other buildings suitable for it, a college, a club and a factory are to be the main structures. There will also be a park to be called the Salah ed Din Park, after the Moslem warrior of Crusader times.”

The 1945 article also describes plans by the council to transfer remains buried in the cemetery to a separate, “walled reserve” and cites rulings from prominent Muslim clerics at the time allowing for the building plans to progress.

“In an interview with Al-Wih-da, the Jerusalem weekly,” the Palestine Post article continues, “a member of the Supreme Moslem Council stated that the use of Moslem cemeteries in the public interest had many precedents both in Palestine and elsewhere.

“The member added that the Supreme Moslem Council intended to publish a statement containing dispensations by Egyptian, Hijazi and Demascene clerics sanctioning the building programme. He pointed out that the work would be carried out in stages and by public tender. Several companies had already been formed in anticipation, and funds were plentiful.”

There they go again. With rhythmic regularity of the tides, the Los Angeles Times regales us with stories of assorted legal misdeeds said to be perpetrated by the government of Israel upon the long-suffering Arab population in connection with land-use. But as noted in some of my earlier columns, upon analysis, the “atrocity” du jour can turn out to be a garden-variety land-use dispute in which the Israelis conduct themselves the same as we do over here. . . .

For one thing, cemeteries are routinely taken by eminent domain for other uses. There is even an old English vaudeville song entitled “They’re Movin’ Father’s Grave to Build a Sewer” - you can hear a recording of it by the Clancy Brothers.

Even as I write, the ink has barely dried on an Illinois court decision allowing Chicago to take a cemetery for the expansion of O’Hare Airport (Art Barnum, “Chicago Wins Cemetery Land for New O’Hare Runway,” Chicago Tribune, Feb. 8, 2010). But you won’t find any lachrymose Los Angeles Times op-eds decrying the affront to the “sensibilities” of those Illinois folks. Closer to home, California has litigated this business up one side and down the other, in state and federal courts, so that our law is clear that though cemetery land may be consecrated, it is not immune to being taken for other uses.

William "Slaughter the Settlers" Bapthorpe Is Back

William Bapthorpe, a below the line commenter on the Guardian's Comment is Free who was eventually banned after having commented that settlers "must be slaughtered, every last man, woman and child," is back. He writes under the new name LavartisProdeo, though he freely admits he is Bapthorpe. CiF Watch has the whole story here.

February 19, 2010

CAMERA's Campus Fellow in Arizona Exposes "Apartheid Week" in Op-Ed

An excerpt from CAMERA campus fellow Aaron Jacobs' guest column in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, University of Arizona's student newspaper:

It’s countries like Iran, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia that should be criticized for the lack of rights their citizens receive, not Israel, which is the only democratic country in the region. As someone who has lived in Israel, I have witnessed the highs and lows of the Israeli government. The truth is that Israel is not perfect, but no country is. However, to even link Israel with the word “apartheid” is not only prejudiced but very much inaccurate. ...

Instead of falsely accusing Israel as an apartheid state this year, let’s come together and celebrate the freedoms of Israel’s citizens in efforts to work together towards a peaceful future.

February 18, 2010

"What Often Happens to Israel's Critics"?

Andrew Sullivan, in a series of recent posts his blog The Daily Dish, purports to describe "What often happens to Israel's critics."

What happens, we're meant to believe, is that these critics are met by little more than "smears and character assassinations."

Of course we've heard this all before from the likes of former president Jimmy Carter, Gaza investigator Richard Goldstone, and Independent columnist Johann Hari. And of course, in each of these cases, the cry of "character assassination" was intended to denigrate and distract from the many serious, substantive critiques of their work. Put another way, the smears were not targeted at Israel's critics, but rather employed by them and directed at the critics' critics (including CAMERA).

But what about the latest charge by Sullivan?

Well, his exhibit one is nothing other than a repeat of a May 2008 column by Johann Hari. Apparently Sullivan hadn't seen the Hari column until now. And apparently he didn't realize, or didn't care to reveal to his readers, that Hari's accusation has long been debunked.

Discussing the reaction to a column he wrote blaming Jewish settlements for poisoning Palestinian land and water with untreated sewage, Hari claimed, and Sullivan echoed nearly a year later,

There was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile "pro-Israel" writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ...

Which might be very convincing, were it not yet another distortion by Hari. CAMERA has, in fact, never compared Hari to Goebbels or Ahmadinejad, and very much did dispute the substance of his piece (including inter alia by pointing out the key fact that Hari concealed: that Palestinians are by far the major source of untreated sewage in the West Bank. See rebuttals of Hari's column, e.g., here and here.)

So, understood with all the relevant facts, here is "what often happens to Israel's critics": They sometimes falsify or otherwise distort the facts in relentless attacks on Israel. When that's the case (and also when people disagree with their logic for other reasons) they are often criticized by others, who fact-check, add context and debate ideas. When that happens, Israel's critics often pretend that the criticism amounts to little more than ad hominem smears, and fail to reply to the substance of the challenges.

Plus ca change.

Disclaimer: This blog post is in no way charging Andrew Sullivan with being an antisemite. That's left for otherstodebate.

Covert wording clouds reports on stealth assassination

Washington Post coverage of the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh put the verbal equivalent of false beards on al-Mabhouh’s organization, Hamas, and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. In “Pressure grows on Israel over Hamas official’s slaying; Fake British passports used by alleged assassins fuel speculation that Mossad spy agency killed operative in Dubai hotel” The Post refers to “militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah,” and to “Hamas militants in Gaza.” It also twice mentions “Hamas’ military wing.”

The dispatch, by Post Jerusalem bureau chief Howard Schneider, topped February 18's foreign coverage including two articles about the U.S. and allied offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan, even though Schneider first reported the murder in “Death of Islamist Hamas commander in Dubai prompts hunt for killers” on January 30. The otherwise informative “Pressure grows on Israel over Hamas official’s slaying” fails to note that the United States has designated both Hamas (the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement) and Hezbollah (the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi’ite “Party of God”) as terrorist organizations.

References to “Hamas’ military wing” sanitize the group’s “Izeddine al-Qassam” component, which primarily conducts terrorist attacks against Israeli non-combatants. They also ignore statements by Hamas officials that theirs is a unitary organization; its separate functions — schools, recruitment, terrorism, aid to “martyrs” families, etc. — complement each other in pursuit of the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic fundamentalist theocracy. A May 27, 1998 Reuters dispatch quoted Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin as explaining that “We cannot separate the wing from the body. If we do so, the body will not be able to fly. Hamas is one body.”

The same “military wing” verbal disguise appeared in “Death of Islamist Hamas commander in Dubai prompts hunt for killers.” Schneider noted that “Mabhouh was among the founders of Hamas's military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, which is held responsible for hundreds of suicide and rocket attacks against Israel over the years. He was notorious for his involvement in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989.” Though Hamas occasionally acts as a para-military guerrilla group, directly attacking Israeli combatants, the “hundreds of suicide and rocket attacks against Israel” The Post mentioned overwhelmingly targeted civilians.

“Death of Islamist Hamas commander” also sanitized Imad Mugniyeh, calling him a “militant commander” rather than terrorist leader. The notorious Mugniyeh was implicated in numerous Hezbollah attacks against Americans as well as Israelis and against Jews outside the Middle East.

February 16, 2010

Palestinian TV Preaches Hatred of Jews

Palestinian Chairman Abbas’ TV Preaches Hatred of Jews

While the major news media generally portray Palestinian Authority leadership as moderate (sharply contrasting it with that of Hamas), the PA continues to provide for the indoctrination of Palestinian Arabs – through its schools, mosques and media – to hate Jews and to deny the legitimacy of Israel.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) provides a video clip and translation of the Friday, January 29, 2010 sermon delivered from the pulpit of Nablus’s Bourin Mosque and aired on PA official television which is under the control of Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the American-backed Palestinian Authority:

The Jews are the enemies of Allah and His messenger (Muhammad) and the enemies of humanity in general, and of the Palestinians in particular.... Jews will always be Jews. Even if donkeys cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl, and snakes cease to bite, the Jews will not cease to be hostile to the Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad said: `Whenever two Jews find themselves alone with a Muslim, they think of killing him.' Oh Muslims, this land, these holy places, and these mosques will only be liberated when we return to the Book of Allah, and when all Muslims are prepared to become mujahideen for the sake of Allah, in support of Palestine, its people, its land, and its holy places. The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘You will fight the Jews, and you will kill them …’

Major news media – including the New York Times and Washington Post which heavily cover Palestinian-Israeli matters – published nothing about the sermon, the content of which clearly violated existing Israeli-PA agreements on ending incitement.

February 10, 2010

More Evidence of Goldstone Commissioner's Bias

Desmond Travers, one of the four commissioners responsible for the Human Rights Council's "Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict," or the Goldstone Report, had previously revealed his bad faith by arguing during his "investigation" that Israeli soldiers are uniquely conditioned to murder children.

Now, further evidence of his pronounced anti-Israel bias emerges. A report by JCPA notes that Travers is peddling the "fact" that, in the month before Israel's Operation Cast Lead, "something like two" rockets were fired into Israel. In fact, in December 2008, up through the 27th of that month when the Operation began, roughly 145 rockets and another 145 mortars were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip.

February 05, 2010

Iranian Turtlenauts, Syrian Threats

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's comments warning of a possible war with Syria have received wide coverage in the news media. Comments from Syria and Iran have received much less attention.

On Feb. 4, 2010, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem implicitly threatened to commit war crimes against Israeli civilians by threatening to bring any war to Israeli cities should fighting break out. The Syrian government's news agency (SANA) carried his comments in a meeting with the Spanish ambassador Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos. Moallem is quoted as stating:

"Israel should not test Syria's determination… Israel knows that war will move to the Israeli cities….Israel has to commit to the just and comprehensive peace requirements."

This follows a statement by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also reported by the Syrian News Agency that "Israel is not serious about achieving peace since all facts point out that Israel is pushing the region towards war, not peace.."

For his part Spanish ambassador Moratinos "expressed appreciation of Syria's positive role for the establishment of security and stability in the Middle East."

These words came within days of the threatening words reported on the Iranian government's Internet News site PressTV (Feb. 1, 2010) from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iran "will deliver a harsh blow to the 'global arrogance' on this year's anniversary of the Islamic Revolution." Iran recently launched a rocket into orbit carrying turtles, mice and worms. There is concern that this rocket could be utilized for delivering warheads as well. Ahmadinejad's explicit threat received little coverage from the American news media.

February 03, 2010

Financial Times of London's Bias Against Israel Attracts Attention

Cartoon appearing on the Financial Times' Rachman blog

The Financial Times of London (FT) is a prominent business-oriented newspaper with an international reach. Over the years its slanted coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has attracted notice. Two recent pieces expose the depths of this bias.

Just Journalism, an independent media research group based in the UK, published an investigative report that assesses 121 Financial Times editorials relating to the Middle East over the past year. According to Just Journalism board member Robin Shepherd, "This report demonstrates that the FT has repeatedly disregarded salient facts when it comes to the Middle East and disproportionately blames Israel for the region’s woes."

The report finds that

1. The FT views Israel as primarily responsible for the perpetuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while downplaying other factors. Other aggravating factors such as terrorism, disunity within Palestinian ranks and a failure to accept Israel as a Jewish state are downplayed.

2. The prospect of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities is referred to in five editorials; yet no Financial Times editorial in 2009 makes reference to the threatening rhetoric from Iran’s President Ahmadinejad against Israel.

3. Israeli political leaders are depicted as ‘irredentist’, ‘hawkish’, and ‘ultra-nationalist’. In contrast, Palestinian
leaders are portrayed as ‘moderate’ and ‘conciliatory’, if corrupt.

4. The Saudi Peace Initiative of 2002 is touted in seven editorials and the newspaper expresses sympathy with the recent Arab refusal to meet Israeli concessions with Arab concessions. The newspaper attacks the West – the
US in particular – for backing ‘an ossified order of … Arab strongmen’ typified by the Mubarak regime in Egypt;
however, Saudi Arabia is spared harsh criticism, particularly regarding its human rights record.

5. The publication backed the Goldstone Report, which described the Israeli military operation as ‘a deliberately
disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population’. The Financial Times
described Israel’s actions in Gaza as ‘disproportionate’ in four editorials.

6. Israel’s total military and civilian withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005 is not viewed as a meaningful Israeli
concession, rather it is seen as inadequate at best, and a cynical ploy at worst

The report notes a tone of deference towards the Saudi regime, which raises the question of what influence the wealthy Saudi regime has on the newspaper.

The Just Journalism report prompted Marty Peretz, publisher of the New Republic, to pen an editorial on Feb. 1, 2010 where he notes that the CEO of the group that owns the Financial Times was associated with the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Foundation. The Foundation has been the beneficiary of substantial donations from wealthy Arab individuals and states.

February 02, 2010

Gearing Up for Another Season of Anti-Zionism in the PC(USA)

By now it’s axiomatic that most of the people in the Presbyterian Church (USA) object to the obsession the denomination’s peace activists have for the alleged sins of Israel, the Jewish state.

Most Presbyterians sense there is something unseemly about the manner in which church staffers and activists regularly condemn Israel without acknowledging the manifest sins of its adversaries or the ideology that animates hostility toward Israel in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, a small and persistent group of church staffers and activists continue in their ongoing effort to portray Israel as uniquely worthy of the PC(USA)’s condemnation. Their activities quicken in the months before the denomination’s General Assembly which takes place every two years.

When it comes to evangelization, these anti-Israel activists are indefatigable.

This year will be no different. Late last year, the denomination’s Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) set the stage for the upcoming debate over Israel in November when it issued a report on its "Israel-Palestine" activities from 2004 to 2009.

In the report, the committee described the efforts of shareholder activists from a number of church-related organizations to draw attention to the alleged misdeeds of Citigroup, Motorola, Caterpillar and other companies.

Predictably, the report states that Caterpillar “does not measure up to the General Assembly’s stated position that the church’s investments in companies doing business in Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank be in companies involved in only peaceful pursuits.”

The MRTI closed its report with a proposed resolution for the PC(USA)’s upcoming General Assembly, which calls for the body to denounce “Caterpillar’s continued profit-making from non-peaceful uses of a number of its products.”

The proposed resolution continues:

We call upon Caterpillar to carefully review its involvement in obstacles to a just and lasting peace in Israel-Palestine, and to take affirmative steps to end its complicity in the violation of human rights. We hope that, by God’s grace, Caterpillar will come to exercise its considerable power and influence in the service of a just and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine.

The proposed MRTI resolution describes the process as “corporate engagement” but sets the stage for divestment from Caterpillar sometime in the future if the company does not abide by the PC(USA)’s demands.

In short, the people intent on using the denomination’s polity as a font to attack Israel are still at it and are preparing the ground for yet another fight about the Arab-Israeli conflict at the upcoming General Assembly. The apparent repudiation of their actions at the 2006 General Assembly has had little if any impact on their actions.

To buttress these efforts (and to make it perfectly clear that Israel is the main culprit), the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA), an organization created by a vote of the General Assembly in 2004 has been broadcasting an unmistakeable anti-Israel message.

The organization’s blog, includes laudatory references to Jeff Halper, Norman Finkelstein, and for a while included a link to an explicitly anti-Semitic youtube video titled “I am Israel.”

Eventually, the "I am Israel" link was taken down by the IPMN because “its message was not one of reconciliation.”

No kidding.

The IPMN blog still, however, includes a link lambasting the ADL over a controversy wholly unrelated to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

What's that about? How is that related to IPMN's mission?

This links demonstrate that while the IPMN was created to educate members of the PC(USA) about the realities of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the people involved with the organization have used their authority (and the resources given to them by the denomination) to demonize Israel.

The upshot is this: The Bias Remains the Same. So does the animus. PC(USA) staffers and peace activists are still motivated by the same anti-Israel agenda that manifested itself at the denomination's 2004 General Assembly.

The claim that there was not a drop of blood at the scene [where Mohammed al-Dura allegedly was killed in 2000] is erroneous. Blood is clearly visible in the videos, and is mentioned in the reports prepared by the hospital that treated Jamal al-Dura, Mohammed's father.

Jamal filed a libel suit in France against Dr. Yehua David and a French Jewish newspaper that published his argumetn that the father's scars are from an operation conducted six years earlier. Dr. David was referring only to injuries to the limbs, and not to a serious injury to Jamal's hip. An investigative judge in France accepted the suit, and the case will be heard in court.

I would like to point out that no doctor in Shifa Hospital has claimed that the child brought to the emergency room arrived at 10 A.M. The emergency room director said: "Mohammed al-Dura arrived around 1 P.M." That was 2 P.M. Israel time, because the Palestinians switched to winter time.

Pedatzur implies there was a conspiracy involving hundreds of Palestinian protesters, Shifa Hospital doctors and doctors from the military hospital in Jordan, where Jamal al-Dura was treated, and that Israeli security services did not find anything about it. Is this possible?

Talal Abu Rahma filmed the real time events as they occurred on September 20, 2000, at the Netzarim junction for the French station, France 2. This not a staged event [sic], but rather problematic events that led to Mohammed al-Dura being killed and his father being seriously injured. In order to review the incident, France 2 and Jamasl have announced more than once that they are willing to have the boy's remains exhumed. France 2 stated that it is willing to establish an investigative committee based on international standards.

Despite this, an official request from any Israeli entity to participate in a serious and official investigation has never been received.

I would like to clarify that the legal battle against Philippe Karsenty is not yet over and is still pending before the High Court of Appeals in Paris. In addition, France 2's management voiced sharp protest over Esther Shapira's film.

Is Enderlin to be believed now? In the past, Enderlin has said "I cut the images of the child's agony (death throes), they were unbearable," and yet journalists who saw the complete, unedited footage said they saw no agonized death throes.

In addition, Enderlin's claim today that the boy's body was brought into the hospital at 2 p.m. is also problematic, given that his original report put the time of the shooting incident at 3 pm:

3 pm... everything has turned over near the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip...here Jamal and his son Mohammed are the targets of gunshots that have come from the Israeli position.... A new burst of gunfire, Mohammed is dead and his father seriously wounded." [September 30, 2000, France 2 evening newscast]

February 01, 2010

All Aspects of the Aftonbladet Affair

JCPA publishes "The Aftonbladet Organ-Trafficking Accusations against Israel: A Case Study" by Swedish scholar Mikael Tossavainen, detailing all of the players (including CAMERA), and concluding:

Yet the big losers from the affair appear to be Aftonbladet itself, the Swedish government in the international sphere, and Europe as a whole, since Sweden stood at its helm for six months. From a European perspective, the crisis ended with the Spanish assumption of the presidency on 1 January 2010. The question of how long it will take for Swedish-Israeli relations to heal is another matter.